By the age of six, girls become less likely than boys to associate brilliance with their own gender and are more likely to avoid anything they think may require it.

A new study published in the journal Science shows how early gender stereotypes take hold and suggests that they may affect girls for their entire lives.

“Even though the stereotype equating brilliance with men doesn’t match reality, it might nonetheless take a toll on girls’ aspirations and on their eventual careers,” says Andrei Cimpian, professor of psychology at New York University.

“Our society tends to associate brilliance with men more than with women, and this notion pushes women away from jobs that are perceived to require brilliance,” adds Lin Bian, a doctoral student at the University of Illinois. “We wanted to know whether young children also endorse these stereotypes.”

With this question in mind, researchers tested children ranging from 5 to 7 years in a series of studies.

In one experiment, children heard a story about a person who was “really, really smart” and were then asked to guess which of four unfamiliar adults (two men, two women) was the story’s protagonist. They were also asked to guess which adult in a series of paired different-gender adults was “really, really smart.”

While the results showed both boys and girls aged five viewed their own gender positively, girls aged six and seven were significantly less likely than boys to associate brilliance with their gender. These age differences were largely similar across children of various socioeconomic and racial-ethnic backgrounds.

A subsequent study asked whether these perceptions shape children’s interests. A different group of boys and girls aged six and seven were introduced to two games—one described as for “children who are really, really smart” and the other for “children who try really, really hard.”

The content and rules of the two games were otherwise very similar. Children were then asked four questions to measure their interest in these games (e.g., “Do you like this game, or do you not like it?”). Girls were significantly less interested than boys in the game for smart children; however, there was no difference between the boys’ and girls’ interest in the game for hard-working children—a finding that illuminates the targeted nature of gender stereotyping.

A final experiment compared five- and six-year-old boys’ and girls’ interest in games for smart children. The results showed no significant differences in interest between five-year-old boys and girls, consistent with the absence of brilliance stereotypes at this age. However, by six girls’ interest in the activities for smart children was again lower than that for boys.

“In earlier work, we found that adult women were less likely to receive higher degrees in fields thought to require ‘brilliance,’ and these new findings show that these stereotypes begin to impact girls’ choices at a heartbreakingly young age,” says Sarah-Jane Leslie, professor of philosophy at Princeton University.

The researchers caution that more work is needed to investigate how broadly these results apply.